writing to get through

Lose the Win Win

So, a new party has “won” the House. The party balance has shifted once again in what seems to be our default love of inbalance in political life. Chaos theory reigns. Take the Congressmembers, shake them up in a cup and scatter them across the White House lawn and they’ll somersault and bounce to a halt at random. Red States. Blue States. Scattered at random.I don’t really see a winner here.

The last couple of decades has seen it all – House dominance, Senate majority. All one party, same as the President. All one party, opposite the President. Opposite parties. But mostly the default configuration is that the ideas represented and the votes owed to one faction or another are a mix. At odds. In need of confrontation, or, at the very least, dialogue. In the end, that’s not a bad thing. It’s the essence of representative government. It represents my workplace, my family…and, I’ll bet, yours too.

We don’t all get along, Rodney. Ask Adam and Eve what happened to their sons. There is friction, sparks, hurt feelings, competitiveness, smug victory. It’s the human condition. Cutting off the other driver, frosting a prettier cupcake. Everybody needs a “win” now and then. But winning isn’t everything even in a culture that invented the term, “Win-Win.”

“Life is not a dress rehearsal!” Sarah Palin cries in her carefully rehearsed, crafted and packaged series about the last wilderness. (What WAS that?) Sometimes, it is, Sarah. Some would say that’s all it is.Some would say that this life is practice for an unimaginable eternity where those who would lose in this life become rulers in the next. It’s the cosmic expression of a red slushy being thrown in the face of the football players instead of the Glee club singers.

What is the antidote to the “Win-Win?” Throw in the towel. Be gracious and kind to all. Drive with courtesy in the slower lane. Don’t show off. Let go of frustration and, win or lose, love each other.